Featured on PDR in the collection Journey from Venice to Palestine, Mount Sinai and Egypt (ca. 1467)

Selected images from a beautifully illustrated account of a journey made from Italy to the Middle East. Although this book (known as Egerton 1900) was purported to reflect a journey made in 1465 by Gabriel Muffel, third son of the Nuremburg patrician Nicholas Muffel, the travelogue is, however, merely a German translation of an account of a journey made more than a century earlier. This actual journey was undertaken by the Franciscan friar Niccolo da Poggibonsi who visited the Holy Land in 1346-50, and wrote up his travels in the Italian book Libro d’oltramare. The work remained untranslated until Muffel got hold of it, also supplying it with 147 miniatures, a selection of which are presented below. The confusion doesn't stop there. Muffel's account was…